2013-04-02

The path to political victory

As the WaPo article on UKIP shows, the American elite remain tone deaf on the issue. UKIP has forced the issue in Britain, but if an American party or candidate runs a real anti-immigration campaign they will cruise to victory. Yes, they will be called racist and xenophobic, but a candidate who ignores the jibes will soon find open territory lies just beyond. The extremist policy is the defacto open borders policies of the U.S. and U.K. and once put on the defensive, it's all down hill. This is why the left changed the term illegal alien to illegal immigrant to undocumented worker. Once you turn the argument the other way, especially given the unemployment rates, legal immigration will come under attack. A moratorium on all immigration seems outlandish today, but only because no one is pushing it. Both parties are basically open borders, but while immigration moratorium might not win, but it could become a defensible position for one party, while the other would argue for limited high-skilled immigration. This is how far apart the peak social mood extremist immigration policy is from current social mood. And we're still a long way from peak negative mood.